


Triangulation

by sixpences



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-19
Updated: 2006-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:25:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixpences/pseuds/sixpences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mathematics and navigation on a long journey home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triangulation

He's always had a head for mathematics; it's the straightness of a derivative to the swooping curve of his thoughts, an anchorline in a storm. Fingerlengths and ink marked out far horizons on paper for him, once, and now it's the close hauled angle of a sail and the solar ecliptic that breathe life into quillpenned islands.

The world is full of sharp degrees. One, here, he's sure he has the measure of; the way Barbossa's eyes run aft like they might over a woman, the way wrinkled hands touch black timbers like the caress of a sailor newly a-port. This is old, this is familiar, and he won't miscalculate again, whatever the man's schemes.

There's two points, there; like waves rearing before a storm. Davy Jones and the East India Company, his soul and his neck on the line again, but there will be some way to bisect it- there always is. More than thirteen years at the sharper edge of fate tell a man a lot about equilibrium, about the width of the threads his life hangs by and how easy they are to snap.

But it is discomfiting to find himself at an angle, cardinal and ordinal with Will, and Elizabeth still searching for some sense of direction. They sail past uncharted islands and he feels a sympathy; no navigator will find them by normal means, and the winds are still changeable.

He wakes one morning to find her sat at the table in his cabin, slim hands spreading a map across it. He watches as she frowns over it, a fingertip-trace along some invisible coast, then she catches the glint of his eyes from the corner and is gone.

The next morning he is up before she can protest; he points out their position for her, and she nods impatiently, as if she were looking for something else. Her eyes flick between intervals, the scars on his bare chest and back, sketching lines of heat he longs for her hands to follow. But they only linger slightly over the compass, before she goes.

It becomes a pattern, on the mornings when he is not on watch or sleeping off late hours at the helm. There is a little added to the sequence each time; she will comment on current direction, he will explain the sextant that lies encased atop Cathay, and perhaps the warmth of her body will make him forget the chill in these southern waters. Watching her race Will up through the ratlines of a clouded afternoon he wonders if it's really navigation she's trying to learn.

Twenty five leagues from Cape Horn there is mist swirling at the cabin windows. The winds have changed, sometime before dawn, and he wakes to a kiss that tastes of another kind of betrayal. All those old calculations fall apart here, all reckoning of how far and how fast to run swept aside by the falling fabric of her shirt as he trails his mouth over a breast.

He has nothing to equate this to. He has nothing but the keening sound in her throat and uncontrolled whispers falling from his lips as his fingers curl inside her, the musky scent of her hair amidst the rustling of sheets, her palm flat against his chest as she closes her eyes at the pain, and there is nothing but heartbeats in tandem as she moves against him.

The question has changed, now, the compass has shifted. She is softness and sweet beside him and he doesn't care that this is too tangled, that there is an acute sharpness hidden in the rolling of her limbs and the ebony secrets of her eyes. Her mouth is hot against his neck, a kiss pressed to the line that rope has circled and steel sought, more than once.

There is a logic to it, he supposes; her cutlass lies at a strange angle on the floor beside the bed and the hand against his hair bears a jagged scar. Will steps in Pythagorean shadow a deck below.

The maps on the table lie forgotten.


End file.
